Navy Blue jumping from the self-released, underground rap pipeline into a major label deal with Def Jam isn’t something many considered to etch into their 2023 new music bingo card. The Brooklyn rapper, model, and pro-skater has steadily become one of the scene’s more fascinating rhymesmiths because of Sage Elsesser’s ability to give free reign over his existential introspections across a collage of beats produced by an equally-uncanny list of studio collaborators. Ways of Knowing, his first widely-released effort since 2020′s grief-soaked, mercurial sprawl, Song of Sage: Post Panic!, turns a page in Navy Blue’s creative process by seeing him record this effort with only one producer in the London-based Budgie alongside a cast of silken singers in Liv.e, Venna, and Kelly Moonstone. It renders further experiment in his range both sonically and in pen, with laying down sung, gospel-like tunes alongside his sig stream-of-conscious flow, and for that, it has a more cohesive outline than his previous work. In a sense, the weight which crowded his thoughts through crack and hiss has been lifted, revealing clearer pathways. Still, Elsesser is as every bit asking the bigger questions as always of this life, and while the grief that follows him in the years since losing his grandfather – which remains in motif here – we’re beginning to hear how he’s able to balance acknowledging its place in this world as well as opening himself up to possibilities not yet known. For that, bigger things to come feel like they’re a natural fit in Navy Blue’s level up.

Highlights: “The Medium”, “To Fall In Love”, “Pillars”

Navy Blue’s Ways of Knowing is available now on Def Jam.

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